I apologize for the delay in posting; Blackboard was being resistant.
Here we are! At the climax: post-tv. I'm glad that one of today's presentations will be about Tik Tok, because I can't help but think about Tik Tok and its creators in relation to the texts we read today. The 'top creators' of TT collect several million followers within a couple months. Many seem to be about sixteen, eighteen at the oldest. There is an unfortunate and much commented on prevalence of white faces among the most popular names--but as our presenter points out, there are important exceptions.
How does the explosion of TT revise the articles we read for today? Or does it represent an unrelated stream of post-television video content? Raphael's presentation takes an excellent first stab at this question, by drawing on the Parks & Christian pieces. One of the major points of comparison does seem to be the extant feature of the "archive" versus an experience of "liveness". When thinking about the turn to Netflix, Hulu etc as TV providers, the observation of a move to archive seems very accurate. Tik Tok does seem to recuperate "live" experience, however, with an algorithm that can freshly update you on trends and conversations that you're interested in. I don't regularly feel as if I'm reviewing work from a long time ago, it's rather that I'm rocketed into the middle of a party that doesn't really stop.
Which brings me to Professor Mcpherson's article, which I think points the way for TT's development much more accurately. It's about the "lure" of the illusion of "volition", in which a relatively pre-determined path would confer an experience of soft interactivity. Could anything describe TT's interface better? The ultra sensitive AI watches me watch the videos, and in doing suggests new content for me: I am interacting with a live-ish event mainly through the passive activity of scrolling. No 'likes' or 'cursor' necessary, and the breadth of content covers the tracks of this algorithmic guidance.
Here we are! At the climax: post-tv. I'm glad that one of today's presentations will be about Tik Tok, because I can't help but think about Tik Tok and its creators in relation to the texts we read today. The 'top creators' of TT collect several million followers within a couple months. Many seem to be about sixteen, eighteen at the oldest. There is an unfortunate and much commented on prevalence of white faces among the most popular names--but as our presenter points out, there are important exceptions.
How does the explosion of TT revise the articles we read for today? Or does it represent an unrelated stream of post-television video content? Raphael's presentation takes an excellent first stab at this question, by drawing on the Parks & Christian pieces. One of the major points of comparison does seem to be the extant feature of the "archive" versus an experience of "liveness". When thinking about the turn to Netflix, Hulu etc as TV providers, the observation of a move to archive seems very accurate. Tik Tok does seem to recuperate "live" experience, however, with an algorithm that can freshly update you on trends and conversations that you're interested in. I don't regularly feel as if I'm reviewing work from a long time ago, it's rather that I'm rocketed into the middle of a party that doesn't really stop.
Which brings me to Professor Mcpherson's article, which I think points the way for TT's development much more accurately. It's about the "lure" of the illusion of "volition", in which a relatively pre-determined path would confer an experience of soft interactivity. Could anything describe TT's interface better? The ultra sensitive AI watches me watch the videos, and in doing suggests new content for me: I am interacting with a live-ish event mainly through the passive activity of scrolling. No 'likes' or 'cursor' necessary, and the breadth of content covers the tracks of this algorithmic guidance.
This is exactly how I feel about the interactivity of internet: it definitely inflates the sheer quantity of live content we have access to, but ends up distracting us from the quality of the TV liveness we lost. It is true that moments of true liveness may be more scarce on TV, but they have an actual power to be disruptive, take over or start a national conversation, and to create meaningful public spaces instead of pleasure oriented, safe liveness of internet platforms such as TT.
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